Cottage/Fort Myers Beach

What was your overall opinion of Estero Island Cottage and Matanzas Pass? What sights, sounds, and/or experiences stood out? Give concrete examples of how the local quality of life is being enhanced. How has your hometown changed since you were a child? Do you still feel a sense of community? If a developer offered you 300% the market value of your childhood home to develop into condos, would you take it? What if the county approached you about purchasing the land under the 20/20 program, for 80% of its market value?
 
Personally I thought it was an interesting cottage, needs to have a better layout though, kind of hard to get the real "flow" of the changes.  I really liked the aerial shots of the beach through the years, it shows how fast the development happened.   My daughter loved the large alligator head and the sea shells!  How they paint the sea shells for the Christmas tree was very pretty and gave us some ideas of some things we could do.  In regards to the Pass I HATED IT!!  It was smelly and lots of creepy bugs in the mud.  It was not clearly marked we got lost (not fun with 2 small children).  It was extremely muddy and there were snakes (I despise snakes!!!).  




I really see no advantages to the very small piece of land that they have there.  Yes it is a nice place to "get away from the real world" but honestly not that great for long term usage.  I am not advocating to develope it, but it is just not large enough to provide enough of an ecosystem to provide long-term benefits.


My hometown has developed a lot with more apartment building, businesses and subdivisions.  It has not changed so much that I do not feel apart of it, but that could be because the rest of my family still lives there and I visit quite frequently  Now if I could go back and live there, that is an entirely another story.  If they wanted to offer me 300% or 80% for my childhood home they can have it!  The old neighborhood has gone downhill, with gangs and drug dealers.  I don't even want to show my children that I used to live there it has gotten so bad!!